World of Warcraft Wednesday – Blizzcon ‘09, Day 3
Day three. I couldn’t believe how quickly it moved, but for sure, the third day was going to hold some fun. In all actuality, third day is kind of the least exciting. Most of the really interesting panels were done on Friday, and pretty much all that was running was community tournaments and booths until closing ceremonies.
Now, that’s not to say there was nothing to do, of course.
This time, we got to the Convention Center three hours early, and managed to get to pretty much the front of the line. Which was really impressive.
Not pictured: The guy in the really annoying “Wogren” T-Shirt, and the poor, poor Seventh Day Adventist Samoan Chapter. Those guys looked pissed as hell that their church service was being interrupted by a bunch of elves.
The first thing I did, was check out Starcraft 2. I had 20 minutes to play through as much as the Single Player campaign as possible. Unfortunately, that meant I had to buzz through the cutscenes, which were just gorgeous. I’m not a big fan of how they’re releasing each race as its own expansion, but whatever.
The game itself? Played just fine. Just like you would expect it too. Pathfinding could use a little work (the first mission involved escorting transports across a series of bridges under attack by Zerg), but it played solid.
Next, I went through the Cataclysm line. Twice. Once each with Worgen and Goblin. I will say that I had the most fun with the Goblin rogue I made. The Goblin starting zone (as it was presented at Blizzcon) was tight and fun. It reminded me a bit of how the Draenei starting zone was set up. The Worgen zone was pretty amazing, atmospherically, but I have to say I was a bit turned off by how it was working at Blizzcon.
Most of the quests were picking off individual mobs, and with five billion people trying to play all at once, well, there weren’t enough mobs to go around, so I really didn’t get to enjoy the game as much.
I will say that they did a fairly good job with the presentation otherwise. There were tons of computers, so you never waited in line too long, and they had some neat little prizes you could win from quest rewards. I never got anything, but the guy next to me won a poster.
They had some fun little items sitting around the WoW Area. It’s kind of fun to see what people have made.
Also wandering around the area were, NVidia’s hired booth babes. Clearly dressed as…two girls and a Draenei? I guess? That blue paint was terrible, by the way. It came completely off by the end of the day.
There was also a “fan picture area” that developed around one of the hallways, where the players that came in costume all just kind of lined up and people took pictures of/with them. That place got crowded in a hurry, but it was pretty neat to see some of the time people put into their costumes.
And…the…um…lack some people put in.
They also had a few photo op places. Here’s my friend Johan and I winning WoW.
They also had a realm meeting area, where you can finally come face to face with that guy that camped you for three hours every time you tried to level in STV. I would’ve hung out there, but somebody actually stole the placard for where Dalvengyr was supposed to meet. Which is funny, because I wanted to steal that placard.
I also met Richard Knaak and Christie Golden out on the show floor. Say what you want about Knaak, but his “War of the Ancients” series was great. As for Golden, she’s one of the best fantasy writers going right now, and “Arthas” was pretty great, if a little disjointed.
So, then it was pretty much closing ceremonies time. They had one more short Q&A session. Ghostcrawler was there. He looked really pissed all weekend for some reason.
They talked a little about Path of the Titans, which seems like a little more generic glyphs.
Here’s a look at the Path’s talent tree.
Then, after a short delay, Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftains took the stage. I was a little disappointed with their reception, as were they you could tell, because they are the official WoW in-house development band, and a bunch of cool guys. They rocked out a few of their WoW Related songs, and took a mocking stand about how stupid Level 85 Elite Tauren Chieftain is going to sound. So they floated the idea of calling themselves
Then it was time for Ozzy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more tepid crowd for a concert, and poor Ozzy looked completely flustered. Afterwards, he gave interviews saying he thought the crowd warmed up to him fine, but the sad truth is, it was mostly just people sitting on their hands, and about 1/3 of the crowd left after the first couple songs to beat the traffic.
And, funnily enough, a lot of people were watching the TV screens of Ozzy instead of the stage.
I was way the hell in back, but I did take a few pictures.
And hey! He brought that kid from Ellen on to play guitar with him on “Crazy Train.” Which was pretty friggin’ awesome.
Anyway, I hope you had fun taking a picture journey with me through Blizzcon. It was definitely a massive blast, and I’m going to go as many times as I can. And I’d suggest anybody who even has an inkling of interest, try to come next year. It was well worth it.